MicroHorror

Slav dropped from the tree and landed inside the walled garden. No dogs came.

The house windows were dark but he noticed a movement outside. A figure crossed the broad terrace and descended the steps to the garden. It was a girl wearing a black cloak. She felt her way with a stick like a blind person and carried something that glinted. Slav smiled, slipped his hand into his pocket and stroked the knife, ran his thumb up the blade. He ducked through the shadows after her.

He followed her to an arbor of holly trees out of sight from the house. He was surprised by a second figure, but quickly realized that it was only a statue, a bearded man holding a giant bone club. Slav stroked his jaw and tensed as the girl dropped the cloak. She was naked; her body glimmered pale in the moonlight.

She raised a silver flute to her lips, and swayed as she began to play. He couldn’t hear it of course, deaf from birth, but he worried others might hear. He glanced about, wondered who had draped garlands of flowers over the statue and set a brazier burning charcoal and sprigs of myrtle. Would the music bring people?

Something was happening to him. He felt strange, perhaps there were some other herbs being burnt on the fire? He thought he could hear for the first time in his life, the sound of wild music. The grass writhed beneath his feet, the shadowy branches reached for him with spiky arms. He could feel himself hardening.

Slav shook himself and grinned. This was weird shit. Some blind bitch getting horny with a statue at midnight. She was hot, though. He pulled out the knife. He’d have to get close quick, let her feel the blade at her throat before she screamed.

She didn’t scream as his hand clamped her mouth shut, as the point of his knife pricked her throat, as the steel released a bead of blood.

He liked the feel of her warm body pressed against him. He whispered in her ear, telling her what he was going to do.

Slav winced as a marble hand took the knife from his hand and bent his arm. It snapped. He screamed and dropped to the ground. He saw the statue holding the naked girl. She smiled, groped blindly for his face then kissed the stone lips. Hercules didn’t even look at Slav, simply raised his club.

It was the last thing Slav saw.

The bluebottle landed on Sue’s eye and took a few steps. Sue didn’t move. Not surprising really, considering how hard Sid had hit her. It did seem odd, that fat juicy bluebottle wandering round her blank staring eye.

It was then that he had the idea. Didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier, an absolutely brilliant idea, if it worked.

Later, when he returned to the abandoned foundry, Sid brought with him his purchases. First he twisted the lid off a jar and poured thin honey into her slack mouth. That seemed to work for a while but then it ponded and oozed down her cheeks. Then he opened the bait tin and poured the wriggling maggots over her head. Well, the ones that fell into the mouth came to a pretty sticky end. But what was brilliant was the way the rest quickly burrowed away out of sight, up her nose, into her ears and, well, they just disappeared really quick.

As he left, locking the rusty old iron door behind him, he decided to give it a few days before he visited again.

Sid’s battered Ford bounced down the pot-holed road leading back to Bennett’s Foundry, as was. It had been five days and people had been asking nosy questions. “Where’s your Sue?” they’d ask. “Such a lively, outgoing person, not like her to keep herself to herself!” Too bloody right, he thought. And he caught her right in the middle of putting herself about with him next door, which was when he topped her. Well, the next morning to be honest. There was a good program about fishing that evening.

The door squealed like a stuck pig. He tried lifting it to stop it dragging but it didn’t help any. Didn’t remember it being that noisy when he came here a week ago with the body.

The smell was terrible. He hoped to God there were no dogs downwind of this place.
There had been.

Sid rescued what bits he could and kicked them together in the middle of the dusty floor.

That night, when it had happened, she’d said it had been a mistake to marry him, him and his bloody fishing. She loved people, clubbing and the hurly-burly of city life. She said she was going to leave him, she’d had enough, they were living separate lives anyway.

Sid wrapped the scarf tightly round his mouth and pulled the tarpaulin off of her. The air erupted with a cloud of angry bluebottles. One landed on his hand and he squashed it.

A lot of her had gone but what flesh was left was rinded with fresh fly eggs. A wasp had woven its papery nest in her empty eye socket. A good place to mine the honey-filled tunnel below.

Sid walked round her, excited, watching the way the maggots squirmed beneath her skin, fascinated by the hurly-burly of a million maggots. And then, he started to plan his next fishing trip. He might even get a wasp larva or two, for extra bait, a real bonus.

In Tom’s nightmare, shelves clattered and pickle jars smashed on the cellar floor. Bricks shifted and plaster pattered down. The wall cracked open and a black-bound parcel wriggled out.

Tom woke, staggered from his bed, anxiety twisting his guts. Outside rain sprinkled the window, the sky a gray-blue watery blur. He traced the track of raindrops slithering down the glass. He should have tried harder, maybe if he took his pills, saw Doctor Biers again, he might get back on track.

He pulled on yesterday’s clothes and socks, greasy and clinging. He remembered when clothes smelt sweet, fresh from the line, fluffed and lovingly folded everything in its place. He shuffled downstairs.

The kitchen was cold but still managed a rancid air. Dirty crockery and pans covered every surface, tilting and sliding in slow declines towards the littered floor. Moldering food trailed counter edges like cat sick.

Where had all this crap come from? He shuffled along crooked paths, hemmed by cardboard boxes, chocolate wrappers, lager cans and chip papers. Something scurried away.

Maurice would have hated this mess.

In Tom’s head, the nightmare reran. The black parcel in the cellar stood up. Manicured fingernails tore through plastic sheeting and flexing bones burst the bindings. Big brother Maurice, untidily skeletal, would ball the plastic sheet and mop the floor. Soon he would be finished, the cellar neat as a pin, and Maurice would come up the stairs.

Tom shivered. He remembered the tidying, the beatings, and the fear.

Sweeping newspapers from a chair Tom slumped down, ducked beneath the table and from the shadows retrieved a treasure, an unopened can that had slipped from his drunken grasp the previous night. The can’s silver eye blinked at him and the ring-pull cracked with a joyous psst-chuck! He swigged amber liquid, brewery clean, washing the crud from his mouth, a breakfast of sorts. His mood lifted.

She might like some.

Down in the cellar Maurice howled, twisted and then exploded into dust.

He found a tumbler, wiped it as best he could, and glugged the remaining lager into it. With delicate precision, he removed a tiny hair that clung to the rim. He grabbed a metal tray from behind the fridge and placed the glass at its centre. He draped a gray handkerchief over his elbow, waiter-like, and hoisted the tray and made his way back upstairs.

On the landing, he turned towards the master bedroom. Outside her door, he felt an air of waiting, the presence of sacred things. The carpet felt thick beneath his feet, faint feelings of comfort and security stirred, memories of Christmas morning excitement, bursting breathless into her scented room, jumping on the bed, warm hugs and kisses and then presents.

He pushed the door open. It felt peaceful in the soft lamplight, the curtains closed against the weather, clothes folded neatly on a blanket box at the foot of the bed, a clock’s slow tick, the counterpane on the bed, smoothed and neatly folded, molding the form beneath.

“Wakey-wakey, your butler has brought you a drink.” He pirouetted beside the bed, lifting aside the uneaten cake and cold scummy tea, displacing them with this new, meaner offering.

“Come on, mum, you have to get something inside you.”

He fussed with the bedclothes, tried to brush the stain from the pillow. He bent, not breathing, to kiss his mother’s skull. Flakes of desiccated flesh and hairs caught his bristled chin, detaching as his lips brushed her head, exposing another patch of bone.

“You’re looking good today!”

Men in hoodies hid in the shadows. Moonlight showed latex masks: Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Mummy.

Dracula flicked a butt into the shrubbery and pounded the door with his baseball bat. Frankenstein’s Monster and the Mummy looked this way and that, checked the deserted road and shadowy forest.

The door opened softly. An old lady peered out. “Can I help you?” she whispered in a hoarse voice.

Dracula pressed a switchblade beneath her chin. “Give us money, bitch!”

Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula pushed her back into the dimness of the hallway.

The door slammed shut with a strange click. The old lady shook her head. “Tsk, tsk” she said waving her finger. “Do your mothers know where you are?”

Frankenstein’s Monster laughed–pulled out his phone to film the beating. The old lady crumpled beneath a barrage of blows and kicks.

They stood over her, panting and swearing. Then the lights went out.

A firefly light sparkled along the floor. Foul air, a smell of rotting leaves and worse washed over them. The body at their feet glowed then stirred, weaving upwards like a cobra. Her body morphed, arms fused into her sides, scales slid out, encased her body. Only her head stayed the same. But now it swayed above them; emerald eyes, a lipless grin.

There were screams, bangs and wet sounds like giant lobsters being ripped apart. Then silence.

Outside an owl swiveled its saucer eyes towards the house. It blinked. The house blinked back. The doorway split open like a mouth. The house belched and spat out: masks, bats, knives, mobile phones and a wad of bloody Burberry.

The woods were full of whooping goblins and vampires. Johnny shivered and pulled his shroud tighter.

His old house had a carved pumpkin head in the window. Yellow flame eyes winked at him. From the shadows he’d watched children apple-bobbing in the garden. Now they’d gone trick-or-treating.

Johnny went to the deserted water tank. There were still apples floating there. He stuck his head into the water but the apples bobbed away. As he swished he felt wetness seep into his mouth and eye-sockets. Was he doing it right?

Something popped.

Splash! His eyes plopped out, like rotten windfall fruit.

Darren woke. He was naked and gagged, strapped to a rough workbench. It was dark, cold. A woman was making a wet, snorting sound somewhere nearby. He shivered.

“Are you nesh, as my old grandmother would say?”

A single spotlight light clicked on. The speaker thrust his face into view. It was the bald, scary man again, grinning like a demon.

“Soon have you warmed up!”

They both stared as a pale lock of hair drifted down from the darkness above. Darren felt it land on his nipple. Charlie–for that, he remembered, was the man’s name–peered at the hair like a bird sizing up a worm. His grin widened. He tapped it with a cutthroat razor. The cold blade broke skin.

“Struggle if you want but I may cut you if you do!”

With quick skillful movements Charlie applied soap from a can. Darren barely breathed as the razorblade negotiated his trachea, stroked his carotid artery and jugular. Charlie wiped slicks of soap, gray with bristle, into his cupped palm.

“Did you know that women shave more these days than ever before? My grandmother always kept herself covered up. She was decent, never shaved anything.”

Darren winced as he lost his eyebrows.

“That’s better. Smooth as a baby. Apparently the early church considered that pictures showing body hair were depraved. In religious paintings the genitals were always hidden by fig leaves and body hair was painted out. But now, the more women expose their flesh the more they shave their bodies! And it isn’t just the odd leg or armpit; facial and pubic hair, round nipples, even toes.”

Now he hacked hanks of head hair, wielding the razor like a cleaver. He rubbed soap into the stubble before shaving Darren’s head.

“I noticed when I walked in last night that you have a very hairy bottom! Crack and sack with a straight razor will certainly be challenging for both of us!”

Darren whimpered.

“My wife was pure, like my grandmother. At least I thought she was until I came home unexpectedly. But a little bit at a time I’m bringing her back to a state of grace.”

There was a click and the cellar sprung into sharp halogen relief.

Darren didn’t recognize Grace at first. She was bald, naked, gagged, gaffer-taped to the ceiling.

“But of course, you’ve known each other for a while now, haven’t you? No need to be a big girl’s blouse; you’ll be joining her soon enough.”